Further notes on 7.4

[Nix]

On 2 Jul 2008, Adam Jackson verbalised:

> On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 20:47 +0000, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
>> On 2008-06-30, Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> wrote:
>> > Why not? People who go out of their way to install legacy apps can also
>> > go out of the way to install legacy fonts, surely? The vast majority of
>> > users can just go on, content.
>> 
>> As long as fontconfig/Xft remains blur-fascist [1, 2], my software
>> will require core fonts. If core fonts are removed, I will implement
>> bitmapped fonts internally in my software. I will not support
>> blur-fascist font systems such as fontconfig/Xft.
>
> "DOS as a simple and manageable system was the high point of computing."
>
> Also, time is actually of a cubic nature.

The irony is, a lot of the stuff he says in that blog is actually worth
reading, and his software is very nice. (e.g., the fontconfig
configuration file format really *is* horrendous for anyone not a
fontconfig developer to deal with, yet users who don't the GNOME or KDE
control panels for everything are forced to learn it: there should be a
simpler representation that allows normal mortals to do the sorts of
things normal mortals want to do. You shouldn't have to write half a
dozen lines of quite unreadable XML to express a simple and easily-
anticipated limit such as `turn off antialiasing below 8pt'.)

It's just that the good stuff is finely intermingled with wild
conspiracy theories and out-of-touch weirdness as if to ensure that
anybody who actually develops any of the things he's complaining about
will get offended and leave before reading any of his substantive
points.

(Your time cube comparison is apt: I sprayed coffee across the room when
I read that. Anyone who thinks that DOS was manageable has forgotten
what a horror it was to manage.)

>>                                     Just remove the artificial 
>> reparenting restrictions, make root windows like any other windows,
>> creatable dynamically with XCreateWindow, and resizable with 
>> XResizeWindow etc.)
>
> "Just".

Yeah, when you've done that, if you could float the UK across the
Atlantic: I'd like to be able to get to New York more easily, and that
travel time is really hacking me off. It should be simple enough for
anyone not part of the air travel conspiracy.